Book Image

Mastering Delphi Programming: A Complete Reference Guide

By : Primož Gabrijelčič
Book Image

Mastering Delphi Programming: A Complete Reference Guide

By: Primož Gabrijelčič

Overview of this book

Delphi is a cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that supports rapid application development for most operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, iOS, and now Linux with RAD Studio 10.2. If you know how to use the features of Delphi, you can easily create scalable applications in no time. This Learning Path begins by explaining how to find performance bottlenecks and apply the correct algorithm to fix them. You'll brush up on tricks, techniques, and best practices to solve common design and architectural challenges. Then, you'll see how to leverage external libraries to write better-performing programs. You'll also learn about the eight most important patterns that'll enable you to develop and improve the interface between items and harmonize shared memories within threads. As you progress, you'll also delve into improving the performance of your code and mastering cross-platform RTL improvements. By the end of this Learning Path, you'll be able to address common design problems and feel confident while building scalable projects. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: Delphi High Performance by Primož Gabrijel?i? Hands-On Design Patterns with Delphi by Primož Gabrijel?i?
Table of Contents (19 chapters)

Using C++ libraries

Using C object files in Delphi is hard but possible. Linking to C++ object files is, however, nearly impossible. The problem does not lie within the object files themselves, but in C++.

While C is hardly more than an assembler with improved syntax, C++ represents a sophisticated high-level language with runtime support for strings, objects, exceptions, and more. All these features are part of almost any C++ program and are as such compiled into (almost) any object file produced by C++.

The problem here is that Delphi has no idea how to deal with any of that. A C++ object is not equal to a Delphi object. Delphi has no idea how to call functions of a C++ object, how to deal with its inheritance chain, how to create and destroy such objects, and so on. The same holds for strings, exceptions, streams, and other C++ concepts.

If you can compile the C++ source with...